


She needs to be a winner

by orphan_account



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-28
Updated: 2014-09-28
Packaged: 2018-02-19 02:34:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,791
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2371298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Focusing on Johanna Mason, from her Games to the announcement of the Quarter Quell.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She needs to be a winner

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't read Catching Fire in a while, but I wanted to write something about Johanna :) Please excuse any inaccuracies, I'll fix anything wrong once I'm able to reread the book and double-check facts.

 

 

                When her name is announced, she’s shocked, alarmed, horrified, but not frozen. She has a quick wit, and dozens of thoughts begin to flash through her head. She needs to be a winner now; what do the winners do?

                The winners are strong. They act strong and grin at the camera and charm the audiences. They flex muscles and get high scores in training and win over all the idiots in the Capitol. They make themselves known.

                They make themselves known…and by doing so, they make themselves into targets. That’s a weakness; that’s something she can exploit. She starts to sob, forcing fake emotion through her tear ducts and mentally commanding her nose to run. The crowd—her District—sighs in sorrow. _Poor Johanna Mason._ Fantastic.

                Johanna maintains her tears all through the Reaping. She weeps as her parents hug her goodbye, wails through the train ride (her mentor is annoyed), and sniffles as they enter the Capitol. She stops only when she and 7’s boy—a bulky, stupid boy called Mallow—get into their apartment. Then she begins to study. She watches every video from every Games, does push-ups and sit-ups on the floor of her bedroom. She already knows how to handle an axe. When the Games start, she’ll be ready.

 

                Training is moronic. All everyone does is put themselves on display: it’s an easy way to see who her true opponents are. The Careers, of course. The strong boy from 8. The clever girl from 3.

                It’s hard to swallow her pride and act like a fool, but Johanna manages. She steers clear of the axes. She shoots (and carefully misses) several arrows. Pretends the swords are too heavy for her. Breaks into crocodile tears when she ‘can’t’ hit a target with throwing knives.

                The girl from 1 snickers as 2’s boy openly mocks the weaker Tributes. What arrogant morons. Johanna lets herself slip from a rope ladder, hiding her laugh in a huff as she hits the mat.

 

                When they’re interviewed, Johanna trains her eyes meekly onto the ground as they wait in line. Her mentor’s all but given up hope for her, instead focusing entirely on Mallow. Hah.

                “So, how do you feel about your chances in the Games, Johanna?” Caesar Flickerman grins at her, leaning into his microphone.

                “I—I don't know...“ Johanna chokes out several mumbled answers to Caesar's questions, sniveling and eventually weeping. She accepts Caesar’s handkerchief, mopping her eyes and covering her grin. Her mentor is glaring, annoyed at her waterworks. He really thinks Johanna’s a baby, a wimp, and she hopes to President Snow that everyone else does, too.

                She’s quickly ushered off of the stage.  She debates on what to do with the ridiculously bright-green handkerchief, but settles for flushing it down the toilet a few hours later.

                 

                Johanna Mason puts on a complete and utter show for her scoring. She misses every bull’s eye with knives, swings around a sword to randomly and ineffectively hack at a dummy, and shoots an arrow that lands on the ground ten feet before the target. Finally, she collapses on the ground, sniffling and hiccupping and appearing to be holding back tears.

                The 2 they give her is generous. She laughs until her stomach hurts.  

 

                The arena is a forest—incredibly cliché for the Games. When the countdown hits zero, Johanna is off like a bullet. She knows exactly what she wants—the axe—and she gets it. She wastes no time on anything else, instead turning tail and running like the frightened child she’s pretending to be.

                The first day is a bloodbath, and Johanna stays clear of everyone. Instead she scouts around, finding a low pine that serves as a tent and a small river that seems clean enough to drink. She catches a squirrel, realizes she has no means of cooking it—smoke would be too visible, too dangerous—and goes to sleep hungry, holding her weapon like a teddy bear.

                For three days, she maintains her act. The other Tributes don’t seek her out—who would bother to go after such weak prey? There are bigger fish to fry. The Capitol doesn’t care about her—who would root for a crybaby from a nothing District? She has a feeling they’ve all but forgotten about her, instead focusing on the murderous Careers.

                On the fourth day, Johanna Mason stops pretending.

                She stands up straight for the first time in Snow-knows-how-long, replacing false tears with a cold fire in her eyes. She throws her axe four times, and a cannon sounds each time. She takes the packs and goes to bed full of Capitol jerky, a waterproof sleeping bag around herself. She has a feeling the cameras are watching her now.

                By the time a week is out, there are just four left: 1’s boy, 3’s girl, 9’s boy, and Johanna. The clever girl from 3 takes out the boy from 9 in the morning; Johanna makes short work of her before noon. 1 might have been a challenge if he’d paid more attention to his surroundings and less to his lunch, but he never even sees the axe coming.

                When she’s taken out of the Arena, Johanna Mason is bloody and grinning and a winner.

               

                Her mentor—she now shares the Victor’s Village with him—is quick to pat her back and claim he’d always known she was a champion, telling her how clever her little scheme was. Acting weak! Who’d have thought?

                Johanna hates him.

                Her parents hug her tightly as she steps off the train, coating her cheeks in tearful kisses.  

                “Oh, Johanna,” her mother repeats over and over, pressing her lips to her daughter’s head. Her father holds her like he’s afraid the Games will grab her back if he lets go.  

                But as time passes and the beautiful, emotional novelty of having their child back wears off, they grow distant. Johanna slowly realizes that they’re frightened of her, frightened of the idea of having a cunning killer of a child. Shocked that their daughter—their little Johanna!—could fake despair and bury a blade in another teenager’s head.

                She still loves them, and they still love her; they’re parents and child, after all. But Johanna begins to spend more time alone, after that, and nobody seems to mind.

               

                After a week of being home, she watches the recording of her Games. Mallow died on the first day, she learns: the girl from 1 put a spear in his back mere minutes after the Games started. So much for all of their mentor’s efforts.

                She watches past-Johanna change from a crybaby weakling to a cold-blooded killer, and tries to imagine what everyone else saw. The Capitol was surprised, judging by the announcer’s reaction, but was her District? Did they see through her ploy, or would they prefer it if she’d truly been pathetic, if she’d died without any blood on her hands? Would they have considered it more honorable if she’d acted strong from the start, even if it got her targeted and killed?

                She can’t come up with an answer to her own questions, and never seems to be able to ask anyone else.

               

                Johanna Mason grows older, and moves into her own home in Victor Village. Her mentor died a year ago, and her parents decided they preferred their old home, and now she’s almost alone. Almost; there’s another victor, a man named Blight, but he and Johanna rarely speak.

                She’s put her questions behind her now. She did what she had to, and feels clever for it. So what if her parents think her a sneaky murderer? Who cares if her District finds her to be a lying, intimidating killer? They didn’t go through the Games. They don’t know how it felt, to have to be kill or be killed. She doesn’t give a damn. Johanna tells herself this, and she almost believes it.

                It isn’t her fault, anyway. It’s the Capitol, always the Capitol. Johanna wouldn’t have murdered if she’d had the choice; what kid would? Her hatred for her situation grows to a raging anger at the Capitol and Snow.

                When she’s a legal adult and watches Finnick and Cashmere and every other younger Victor whore themselves out to Capitol citizens, she tells them all to go screw themselves. She says several very rude things to several dirty-minded men (and a few women as well), and when she’s back at District 7 a month later, her father’s died in a logging accident and her mother’s dead of a heart attack.

                Johanna’s given all of her parents’ possessions, as per District tradition, and she spends a long time sobbing into their bed. How dare they. How _dare_ they. If she could kill Snow right now, if she could slam her fist into his face or her axe into his head, she would. Damn him to hell. Did the Capitol think they could break her? Damn them all to _hell_.

                The next time she visits the Capitol, she spits in a man’s face, and her aunt is bit by a poisonous spider. She refuses to sleep with an important figurehead, and her grandfather burns in a house-fire. She laughs at someone’s offered money, and several cousins and childhood friends disappear without a trace.

                The time after that, they can’t find anyone to slaughter. Johanna hisses and spits and snarls at people and the worst the Capitol can give her is a slap on the wrist. Snow hates her, she’s sure. Her District hates her. She almost hates herself.               

 

                 When the Girl on Fire comes out of the Arena, Johanna is almost disgusted. _This_ is an act of rebellion? A handful of berries and a cheap teenage romance? God. She’s almost surprised she wasn’t considered rebellious, but then again, her actions were kept hush-hush. 7 knew of her slight rebellion (and the dead friends and family because of it), but to the other 11 Districts, Johanna Mason was just a Victor with spiky hair and a spiky attitude.

                Ugh. Surrounded by her family’s graves, upstaged by berries.

               

                When the Quarter Quell is announced, Johanna Mason is beyond anger. She’s beyond rage, beyond despair, beyond any emotion but a kind of mindless fury. She ends up drinking with Blight until they both pass out. There’s another male Victor, younger than her, but only one woman that can represent 7 this year. Like Katniss Everdeen, there’s no doubt that Johanna Mason is going back into the Arena.

                 So when her name is announced, she’s shocked, alarmed, horrified, but not frozen. She has a quick wit, and dozens of thoughts begin to flash through her head. She needs to be a winner.

                After all, she was before. 


End file.
